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Possible Treatment For Ebola
RedEaredSlider writes "Researchers at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases have found a class of drugs that could provide treatment for Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fever. The new drugs are called 'antisense' compounds, and they allow the immune system to attack the viruses before they can do enough damage to kill the patient. Travis Warren, research scientist at USAMRIID, said while the work is still preliminary -— the drugs have been tested only on primates — the results are so far promising. In the case of Ebola, five of eight monkeys infected with the virus lived, and with Marburg, all survived. The drugs were developed as part of a program to deal with possible bioterrorist threats, in partnership with AVI Biopharma."
... but how on earth will the people affected by these diseases get these drugs in time once they are sick? We can't even get decent distribution of (somewhat) affordable malaria drugs to the parts of the world that need it. This will be just one more cure for a disease that is defeated by poverty and corruption in parts of the world that can't afford any more of either.
This, right here, is an example of the correct priorities for anti-terrorism funding.
It's much harder to cure someone who has been blown up by a bomb, I realize that. But, things like this, and harmonizing emergency radio systems, and subsidized first aid, and other sensible measures that should be done anyway but aren't only as a pure factor of economic reality, they are the first things that should be in line for funding that truly saves lives and makes people safer; and they work equally well for terrorism, natural disasters, negligent officials, and plain bad luck (unlike most anti-terrorism programs which look impressive but are essentially military in nature).
Bruce Schneier has said the same thing for about as long. But still you've got sheriffs buying robotic sentry cannons and military research into autonomous robotic assassins. It's only lucky that, like the space program, the benefits do eventually trickle down to private industry and then to the general population. But it could still be better spent in the first place, for more immediate effect.
So, what are the chances of this actually being supplied to "unimportant" people (ie. foreign countries), for fear of bioterrorist chemists engineering resistant strains?
IMO first aid should be a required class beginning in about the 6th grade, right along with household and small business microeconomics.
Researchers at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases have found a class of drugs that could provide treatment for Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fever.
Is this going to be another example of government spending hundreds of Hundreds Millions of Taxpayer Dollars developing a drug only to give it away exclusively to a pharmaceutical business who can then make billions of dollars on the drug if there's an outbreak? That is exactly what the National Cancer Institute or NCI, part of the US federal government's National Institutes of Health did. The NCI spent more than $484 Million [pdf] developing and testing Taxol as a breast cancer drug. The NCI then gave Bristol-Myers Squibb, BMS, exclusive rights to its use. What did BMS pay for those rights? BMS paid $35 Million in royalty payments through 2002. BMS had those exclusive rights for more than 10 years. Guess how much BMS sold Taxol for... In 2000 BMS sold $1.6 Billion, earning between $4 and $5 Million a day.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
There once was a man from Angola
Who contracted a case of Ebola.
He puked out his guts,
Not excluding his nuts,
Then died as he cried out, "Ricola!"
I do believe that Reston was proven to be airborne by USAMRIID.
Somebody's playing with with the wikipedia ebola Reston page. The page now says that the site of the oubreak was demolished, but has since been rebuilt as a Kindercare. I really seriously doubt this is possible. I would really need video leading from the street signs to the building for this one.
It says a lot that this is an upbeat article about Ebola that delivers the wonderful news: of the immunized monkeys, only three of eight died! This is one nastly little bug. The fatality rate of Ebola Zaire in humans is up to 90%, with an average fatality rate in humans of 83% over 27 years of experience. Nine of ten dead little humans, in three weeks from infection on the outside or two days if you're lucky. Generally speaking that surviving tenth human isn't well off either as the course of infection normally involves a great deal of organ damage. In the case of a group of people who are all infected the likelihood that the one human of ten would receive the care necessary to survive the fever is remote.
If just one person with an Ebola that's as fatal as Ebola Zaire and also airborne gets on a commercial jet flight anywhere in the world - ever - it's pretty much game over for civilization in about a month. 200 passengers and 14 crew infected, connecting flights, layovers, every person in every boarding area for each flight, then home to the family and not feeling well. I don't feel well but I've must-do's so off to work the next day on the train (sniff, sneeze) but I'm not feeling well (hack, cough) so early home, stopping at Safeway for some Theraflu, then Wal-Mart because Safeway was out. Oh, my that's a scary summer flu story on the news but I'm too tired to listen (hack, cough blood, seize, hemmorage out of every orifice, die). By the time the alert is raised the bus drivers on some route near one of those places have outplaced the virus so thoroughly that it's too late to do anything about it. Your only hope is that you're in Madagascar and they have Shut Down Everything. The only good news about Ebola Zaire is that it kills so many hosts so quickly that outbreaks tend to be self-limiting. In several cases so many died so quickly that the disease had no time to spread.
The most recent new variant of Ebola virus, Bundibugyo is named after a district in Uganda where it was discovered in 2007. This one is less virulent, only killing 34% of the people infected or probably infected. It scares me more than a little that new variants are being discovered this frequently.
Not that I want anybody to panic or anything...
Help stamp out iliturcy.